Gahanna's Athena Study Abroad ships students to Europe and beyond

If you’ve ever taken a vacation to Florence, S.C., it’s doubtful you would get this city confused with Florence, Italy. But it does happen, and if you’re Stacy McKay Benander, you find a way to correct it quickly.

“One time we had a student who was going to study abroad in Florence, Italy, and on the very day that that student was scheduled to depart, her parent called our office in a frenzy because when the girl went to the airport to check in for her flight, she realized she purchased a flight to Florence, South Carolina,” she said. “So we had to do some fast footwork and within a half hour, we were able to find her a flight to her intended destination, Florence, Italy.”

Such details, and less crucial ones, are Benander’s bread and butter. Or shall we say her pane e burro?

“Something that is a challenge is that you don’t have anyone else to fall back on,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like being a parent in a strange way.”

Granted, situations like the errant ticket buyer have happened rarely in the five-year existence of Gahanna-based Athena Study Abroad, the company Benander founded to expose college students to the wonders and varied cultures of foreign lands. The business is run in a second-floor office suite on Mill Street by her and four employees, including Benander’s husband, John, who is the company’s vice president of marketing and technology.

Athena Study Abroad is basically a travel agent that arranges study packages for those seeking to enhance their college curriculums overseas. Athena does everything but find the airfare to and from the intended destination, including Florence, Italy, and it is on such a growth track – revenue has increased significantly each year and is up 58 percent since 2009 – that Benander said the company is discussing expanding its scope to include consumer travel services.

Athena arranges programs three times a year: spring, fall and summer semesters. Costs for the 2012 spring and summer semesters run between $9,499 and $13,999. Summer semester expenses range from $2,650 to $5,499.

‘Kids like me’

Benander’s evolution toward starting the business began during her trips studying abroad in Spain while a student at John Carroll University in Cleveland. A native of Greenville in western Pennsylvania, she said she recalls thinking about what an opportunity it was for someone whose neighbors often stayed put.

“The concept of leaving the state would never have occurred to them,” Benander said. It’s that type of person she wants to reach.

She went on to work as an international student and scholar adviser for Ohio State University from 2002 to 2004 and then became director of the International Office at Ohio Dominican University, where her job included arranging overseas study programs and where the seed for Athena was planted. Benander said the students found themselves attending overseas schools that were much larger than their school in Columbus.

“The programs that existed for them were at big, large schools … and that was intimidating for someone from Ohio Dominican.”

For comparison’s sake, during the 2008-09 academic year, nearly 1,800 OSU students studied abroad and the university hosted almost 7,000 students and scholars from 104 countries. Athena Study Abroad averages about 130 to 140 students per academic year.

What Benander learned from Ohio Dominican was to develop relationships with the smaller schools overseas, where “kids like me” would feel more comfortable and where the experience would give them a deeper cultural immersion than they might get elsewhere. Athena has done that in the company’s host countries of Spain, Ireland, Italy, England, Australia and Greece, where studies lean toward the general liberal arts requirements of colleges and universities, so there is a greater likelihood class credits will transfer easily to the American school.

Benander said Athena tries to ensure those type of questions are answered for the student before he or she lands on foreign soil.

“That is supposed to be the idea,” she said, “that they have no questions that we can’t answer.”

Rebecca Mobley, who is unfamiliar with Athena Study Abroad, said having a single facilitator to arrange foreign student excursions is invaluable. The interim chairwoman of the Social Science department at Columbus State Community College has led such trips to Mexico and China.

The Mexican government helped Mobley with that trip, but she enlisted a travel agency for the China trip that brought needed expertise regarding regional cultures and geography, for instance.

“What the private company offered was all the arrangements,” she said.

There is value to studying abroad that goes well beyond learning a new language, said Benander, whose company is named after Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom. Students develop a more three-dimensional perspective of themselves and the world by seeing far-off lands and experiencing a new way of living.

“It is so important that our leaders and students have a global mindset,” she said.